Saying he is "sympathetic to late night comedians' struggle to find jokes to make about me," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) today issued a list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes.
The five jokes, which Sen. Obama said he is making available to all comedians free of charge, are as follows:
Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, "You know, we don't get many kangaroos here." Barack Obama replies, "At these prices, I'm not surprised. That's why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil."
No doubt about it, the flap over that Obama New Yorker cover has created a crisis for political humor in this country. I actually seem to be in the minority in thinking that the cover was funny and an effective satire (there's a broader issue there I may write about when I come back full-time); I also tend to agree with Maureen Dowd (that's rare these days) and others who say it would be good if Obama and his supporters could lighten up a little.
Why don't they?
Forget Monty Python -- here's the real "killer joke" of American politics.
Al Gore invented the Internet.
Of course, he never really said that, but after a year of repetition from a brain-dead political media, amplified by late-night comics looking for punchlines about two pretty dull-seeming candidates in 2000, you'd be hard pressed to find a voter in November 2000 who didn't think Gore had really said that. It was one of a number of exaggerations and outright falsehoods that became running jokes about Gore in 2000, that he'd claimed cleaning up Love Canal, etc. It was a joke, perhaps, but Gore's credibility became a "serious" issue for enough voters that Gore lost Florida by a few hundred votes, lost the Electoral College, and George W. Bush became president.
Eight years later, 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead, New Orleans is still in shambles, and so is the American economy. Ultimately, all because of a "a joke."
It's just hard for people to laugh anything off anymore.
Comment removed.
"It was a joke, perhaps, but Gore's credibility became a "serious" issue for enough voters that Gore lost Florida by a few hundred votes, lost the Electoral College, and George W. Bush became president" Will, if you want to look for two culprits for Al Gore losing in 2000, look at the Dems being unwilling to remove Clinton for lying under oath, and the Elian raid, which turned thousands of Cuban-American voters in Florida away from the Dems in 2000. If Clinton had been gone in 1999, Al Gore would have had time to distance himself from Clinton and would have run as something of an incumbent.— db_cooper- Steak, you're an idiot. Who's a commie? You don't even know what a communist is do you, you filth? Go back to slathering yourself in freedom cheese fries.
Maureen Dowd is a blithering IDIOT!- Main Entry: com·mu·nism 1 a: a theory advocating elimination of private property b: a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed I've never seen or heard Will advocate for either of these things so lose the commie bull, McCarthy.
- The Liberal playbook is that the election was stolen, not that Bush won. Will, you need to read these things before you discuss the 2000 election.— Ramon
- Comment removed.
- Al Gore lost in 2000 because he supported Clinton and helped prevent his femoval from office in 1999. Al Queida did not care who was president in 2001, they just wanted to kill. So bad jokes create giant hurricanes, lead to incompetant mayors, Governors, and assorted idiots in lousiana. Bad jokes also caused reporters to declare there were snipers causing the deaths of dozens of people since rescue helicopters had to be pulled back. And you are wrong. Al Gore did actually help pass the fereal law that led to the internet we now know and he did say during his first run for president that he helped create the internet, was the insperation for love story and a number of other fantasies. So Al Gore has been seeing things for years, not just since he discovered he could make a cool billion dollars pushing stories about global warming.— dutchman
- The ACTUAL QUOTE of Al Gore speaking about the internet. Here it is Billie Clump. You somehow "forgot" to place it in your neat little story. Al Gore on March 9, 1999 "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." So Al Gore "created" the internet, seems pretty close to inventing it. In fact the word create is a synonym for the word invent.— Grill
- Wow, who would have thought that a joke would have changed the course of our nation's history. Isn't it a shame that a joke and a Supreme Court's unbalanced decision would have gotten the nation into such a mess.— JTP
- Gee LJL Bush actually did what any competent president would have done after getting the one page memo on Bin Laden and ordered all FBI field offices to investigate and report back but somehow Louis Freeh's FBI did not know how to read email and report back to superiors AFTER getting the Phoenix memo which stated clearly there were young muslim men at flight schools who only wanted to learn how to take off in airplanes and did not care much for landing. Also you had FBI agents who were pushing their FBI superiors to allow them to investigate Moussoai's computer but were denied as well. Somehow even George Tenet found out but did not tell anyone. It was Clinton's FBI and Clinton's CIA that botched the job. Bush's pick for FBI director was barely on the job 5 days before 9/11. Get your facts straight pal!— Grill
- "I actually seem to be in the minority in thinking that the cover was funny and an effective satire.....I also tend to agree with Maureen Dowd and others who say it would be good if Obama and his supporters could lighten up a little." I agree. Let's put the shoe on the other foot. Say a conservative periodical decided to print a satirical caricature of McCain on it cover. The cartoon presents McCain as a manacing looking, crazed old man in a wheelchair in the Oval Office. He is pressing a button which is labeled "Nuke Iran". In the background is a picture of an evil looking Dick Cheney hanging above the fireplace in which a copy of the Constitution is burning. In this scenario, I don't believe there would've been much of a fuss in the media and McCain himself would've simply laughed it off.— legatus
- Grill, Vint Cerf and Rob Kahn (guys who really DID invent the Internet--and both of whom were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from GWB for their role in inventing the Internet) issued a paper on that very quote from Al Gore: "We don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he “invented” the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet...No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large." The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.— Captain Awesome
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"it would be good if Obama and his supporters could lighten up a little." I think it would be impossible for someone who can link Algore's comment about the internet to the Iraq war and Katrina to lighten up. I do agree though that the Iraq war would not have happened if Algore was President. The Afganistan war wouldn't have happened either, and it would have been impossible to go almost 7 years without an Islamic terrorist attack on American soil. On a positive note, he would have negotiated with Al Qaeda so that the next time they attack us, they wouldn't leave such a large carbon footprint.— jmc
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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